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Last night after the keiko – my final one on this trip – Yamagami sensei and his students at Kagawa University threw me a sayonara party. There was some food, drink and entertainment, and then Yamagami sensei told students to ask me questions – anything they wanted to know. After a moment of uneasy silence, a girl put her hand up and asked me “why you study kendo?”

This must be the question that almost every western kendoka has had to respond to at some point when talking with their Japanese friends or acquaintances. Over the last four weeks I have heard it, in one form or another, at least a dozen times.

For Japanese this seems to be a perplexing issue on more than one account. For one thing, although kendo is a martial art, it has no apparent benefit of being somehow practically useful as a self defense, the way judo, karate or aikido could be. Also, kendo involves a lot of culturally specific aspects that are clearly rather alien to westerners – and it is hard, very hard practice.

In Japan, a vast majority of people start kendo in their childhood, through no decision of their own. Some of them enjoy it, but many do not – and often they quit as soon as they have a say about the matter. However, those who go on doing kendo in their adult years do so almost out of a habit – and when asked why they too would most likely be puzzled as how to answer that.

Obviously there may be many different responses. One could practice kendo in order to stay fit, or perhaps because their friends are doing it. However, when asked “why do you practice kendo,” the stress (at least mentally) seems to be on the final word. There are many things one could do to stay fit and social, and most of them would seem to make much more sense for a westerner to take up than kendo.

In order to begin to answer that “why” question I believe it is first necessary to look a bit closer at what exactly it is we study when we practice kendo. The most obvious reply would seem to be “to fight with a sword.” However, this won’t take us very far. To begin with, kendo is not a very good way to become an expert swordfighter, as we do not actually use real swords in sparring, rather than shinai (bamboo swords that are straight and considerably lighter than katana). Also, kendo fight is decidedly “unrealistic,” as the aim is to score an ippon (a perfect strike, worthy of a full point), and this means that most of the hits that land, and would certainly end the fight with real swords, go unregarded. And finally, even if it was the case that doing kendo could teach one how to fight with a katana, there remains a question why would anyone need a skill like that in today’s world?

It would seem that the answer must lie somewhere else.

When talking about education and learning in general, Aristotle distinguished several different aims (or forms of “knowledge”). On the most basic level, when we learn something we do so in order to acquire a certain skill. This is what ancient Greeks called technê (τέχνη), which is of course the same root that the word “technology” stems from. Technê alone and in itself is neutral, it could be used to many different ends and purposes, both good and bad, beautiful and ugly, wise and not so. It is simply, as Aristotle put it in Nicomachean Ethics, “the art of realising possibilities,” but it does not tell one anything about which possibilities are worth pursuing. In order for the skill to be used properly, it needs to be informed by aretê (which is commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, translated into English as “virtue”). Virtue, however – and this is a point that is stressed both by Aristotle and Plato – cannot be taught, as it is not a matter of rational judgement or calculation. A virtuous person chooses the right action “naturally,” without hesitation or contemplation, and needs no other reason for choosing it apart from it being a right thing to do. Acquiring virtue is thus a matter of cultivation, that of engraining the good qualities into the very character of a person through ceaseless practice – up to the point when they indeed become natural.

In budo there are five fundamental virtues: jin (benevolence), gi (honour), rei (courtesy), chi (wisdom), and shin (sincerity). Sometimes those five are complemented by a few additional ones, such as courage, loyalty and piety. It is evident that kendo does indeed promote those qualities throughout the daily practice. In kendo one is also taught the importance of acting instinctively and immediately, without any reflective thought, uninhibited by fear, confusion or doubt. This way it becomes apparent that learning to fight with a shinai is actually a means and not and end in itself.

This all comes down to the famous distinction between -do and -jutsu (such as in kendo vs. kenjutsu – if the latter is predominantly about acquiring a practical skill or craft, the former aims at shaping one’s character through constant and rigorous practice. This is also the reason why many parents in Japan put their children into kendo classes – so that they would grow up as “good persons,” with right values and proper attitude.

In 1975, the All Japan Kendo Federation published a short document titled “The Concept of Kendo” that every kendoka has seen and read. It says that “the concept of kendo is to discipline the human character through the application of the principles of the katana” and goes on to specify that the way to do it is:

To mold the mind and body,
To cultivate a vigorous spirit,
And through correct and rigid training,
To strive for improvement in the art of Kendo,
To hold in esteem human courtesy and honor,
To associate with others with sincerity,
And to forever pursue the cultivation of oneself.

Doing kendo is not going to turn anyone into a saint, just as studying is not going to automatically make anyone wise. I do not know if practicing kendo has made me a better person – this is for others to judge. I do know, however, that there definitely are some things that have, over those years, become something akin to a second nature to me. When entering big rooms with people in them (like, for instance, cinema halls or conference rooms), I cannot help but instinctively take a small bow at the door. I am unconsciously mindful of passing in front of the people, in particular when they are seated, I tend to place certain objects in a particular way – and so on. I trust that anyone who has done kendo for some time has similar experiences. And this would lead me to believe that there must be also other, perhaps less tangible things that have become a part of my character.

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It was supposed to be an easy one hour keiko at Osaka Shudokan. Having gone through Kitamoto and some other pretty rough practices over the last week I had clearly grown a bit cocky. Of course, doing uchikomi in the heat and humidity of Japanese summer is never going to be a pleasant thing, but I figured that by now I am pretty much fully acclimatised.

However, yesterday we had been walking around in Osaka with Maeno sensei in scorching heat, and my fluid intake throughout the whole day consisted on a small beer and a glass of water. By the time of keiko, there was still 34 degrees outside. Dojo doors and windows were wide open, so I was drenched in sweat already before we got started. After kihon (basic techniques) practice my mouth felt like a Gobi desert. We had a small break during which I tried to gulp down as much water as I could, but this was obviously to no avail, as it all came gushing out through my pores as soon as I put my men back on.

Things weren’t helped by nice people at Shudokan who thought that they were doing me a favor by keeping me spots in the line to senseis, so that I could move from one to another without having to wait. By the fourth match I was utterly and completely exhausted. And then the sensei I was practicing with thought that my men strike could use some improvement and had me do uchikomi. At that moment there was, according to the clock hanging on the dojo wall, less than five minutes left, but at this point I finally had to throw in the towel. There was no breath left and I could literally feel my vision beginning to fade – I was quite probably one or two more attacks away from simply collapsing to the floor. I excused myself to the sensei and was given a permission to go and take off the men. For a while I felt like throwing up. I must have looked pretty awful, as several people came to inquire if I needed any help.

After the keiko I was given some salt tablets (the same that Suzuki sensei had kindly provided before the practice at Shofukan) by Maeno sensei and I must have drank a couple of liters of water in shower. However, it wasn’t until perhaps an hour later that the feverish chills and the feeling of dry mouth subsided.

So today we are off to Kyoto, to have a keiko at Butokuden. It is going to be even hotter day, with temperature reaching 38 degrees Celsius, so I will make it a point to drink aplenty before the evening and this time take the salt well in advance. It is three more keiko to go, and then I’m done.

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Among the great many smart and interesting people that I met over the fifteen years of being an investment banker was Edward. At the time when we met we were doing a deal together in Lithuania, Edward was the Head of Equity Sales in a well-known international investment bank. He was perhaps some fifteen years my senior, meaning that he had probably worked as an equity salesman for about three decades. One night when we were relaxing in a restaurant somewhere in the old town of Vilnius, Edward told me a story.

When we come out of the business school, said Edward to me, we all think we are kings of the world. We’ve got all that knowledge and training, often the best that the money can buy, meant to prepare us for everything and anything that might come our way – and the world is our oyster. Everything is really simple to us. And so we roll up our sleeves and get into the business.

However, pretty soon we will discover that everything is nowhere near as simple as we thought – in fact it seems that world is quite complex. Nonetheless, we have this expensive MBA under our belt, so we figure that we can manage. A couple of years forward it dawns upon us that the world is really incredibly complex and there is no way that we could possibly manage it all. We realize that any success we’ve had is probably due to simple luck rather than us having been any good. In fact we then often feel that we can barely keep our noses above the water. Having no way out, we just carry on, fully knowing that we are at the whim of the fate.

But then eventually, beaten, broken and battered by years of experience, we slowly come to realize that the world is, after all, really quite simple.

I remembered this story today when Haga sensei (who has been taking care of me for the last couple of days) took me to a small private dojo here in Mishima. My arrival was apparently announced well ahead, as everyone already knew to expect me – and this was probably also the reason why we had today four hachidan senseis in attendence. One of them, Koyama sensei, was very young for hachidan, being just 51 years old, but other three were in their seventies. I had keiko with all of them and, as could be expected, was soundly beaten. This in itself is of course nothing surprising. However, what is interesting and important is the way how they beat me. They did not do it with tricks or sophisticated technique, they beat me with the most basic fundamentals.

Kendo is probably as simple as a martial art can be – in fact I personally find it difficult to concieve how it could be any simpler than that. When I am teaching beginners course (which usually takes place over the weekend), I tell people that by Sunday afternoon they know all about kendo, from that point on there is nothing new. Of course, one could argue about that and point out that there are in fact different so-called “applied techniques” with all sorts of complications and subtleties, but fundamentally those are too just a way to execute one of the four basic waza of kendo: men, kote, do or tsuki. And this is it, beyond those four there is nothing else, and even those four fundamentally come down to a single principle of kiri-otoshi (i.e. a “downward cut”) that modern kendo has inherited from Itto-ryu school of swordmanship. This is always the first thing that a beginners learn in kendo as soon as they have a sword in their hand – and as I was reminded today, this is the only thing you ever need to know to beat someone.

In this way, the aim of training kendo is to get back to where we started – simplicity. This is the beauty of hachidan kendo: there is nothing superfluous, nothing unnecessary. Only the determination and solid fundamentals.

Tomorrow will be my last day here in Mishima, and the second day of no kendo in the last three weeks. I must say that I am quite happy about the latter – it is nice to get a day of rest, both physically as well as mentally. On Thursday I will be leaving for Osaka and Kyoto, and then there is only Kagawa left before it is time to head back to Tokyo and then Europe.

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I never had a chance to go to the old Noma dojo that many kendo people speak in hushed tones. It was originally established in 1925 and demolished six years ago in 2007. Just like Tobukan had done before, Noma dojo also held its doors open to all kenshi who wanted to come and practice, and this tradition went on all the way until 2007. If the old dojo was located in a separate building and one simply had to show up for practice in order to take part, nowadays Noma dojo is located on the top floor of the Kodansha offices, so officially a pre-registration though a standing member is required in order to enter the premises

We were picked up at the nearby metro station by Tanaka sensei’s old friend who is a long-standing member of Noma, and then taken through a labyrinth of office buildings to reach the dojo. I was asked to sign in and change into keikogi quickly, and at 6:30 we started with practice.

I can of course understand the nostalgia that many people have for the old dojo, but I must say that the new one is likewise a very impressive place. It has clearly been designed with a lot of care and attention to detail, with many of the original features (such as the basic layout of the training hall, skylights and even ofuro) being retained in the new dojo. Also, the same people continue practicing in the new dojo and this is obviously, from the kendo point of view, what matters the most. Noma dojo has an incredibly strong line-up of kenshis. The asageiko that I attended was led by two hachidan senseis who were the only ones sitting at the kamiza side, and on the shimoza side there was a loooong line of nanadans and rokudans. Among them was a somewhat younger man who looked strangely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where could I possibly have met him. I realised the reason after the keiko in the locker room, when he changed into the tracksuit of the Japanese national team.

Since I am trying to spare my right shoulder, I have been fighting a lot from jodan lately. While in classical schools of kenjutsu there are many different positions that one can fight from, in modern kendo (with an exception of kata) basically just two are used – chudan and jodan. Chudan no kamae is by far the more popular one, being the most basic stance that everyone begins with when starting to learn kendo. In chudan, a person is squarely facing his or her opponent, right foot slightly forward while holding a sword straight in front of one’s body, the tip of the sword at about chest height. The main difference in jodan is that the sword is held above one’s head. There are many other minor differences and details, but those need not concern us at the moment.

In modern kendo there are four legitimate targets for an attack: men (the top of the head), kote (wrist), do (sides of the body), and tsuki (throat, that is attacked by a thrust rather than strike). In chudan no kamae, all these targets are reasonably well guarded. In jodan, however, pretty much everything is wide open. This was apparently a thing that puzzled many early portuguese in Japan who compared the Japanese approach to sword-fighting to the European one. In European fencing, be it in French, Spanish or Italian school, one of the most basic principles of a fighting stance is to minimise the body area that is reachable and visible to the opponent. From this “safety-first” point of view the Japanese way – to face an opponent squarely with everything open, as if inviting an attack – must have seemed a pure madness. However, what many of those early observers must not have realised was that Japanese warrior culture was based on somewhat different premises. Samurai were taught to not fear the death, they were taught to embrace it. It thus mattered little if they set their lives at risk in a fight – indeed, this was the very thing they were supposed to do. What mattered was to overcome the opponent, and if one had to trade his own life for achieving this, then so be it. It probably also helps to appreciate this point if one realises that in buddhism there are many lives for a person to look forward to, and the choices that we make in this particular one will have an impact on the subsequent ones. It was thus no good to cling to one’s life at the expense of making cowardly decisions – it was always the best to take a decisive route and not worry about impermanent things such as earthly existence.

Jodan no kamae is perhaps the best approximation of this attitude in modern kendo. It is impossible to effectively fight defensively from jodan, and in order to have a chance to strike your opponent you will have to be willing to let yourself be struck. It is thus necessary to adopt a very aggressive approach, to try and put as much pressure on your opponent as you can, to force him or her to react – and then decisevely strike yourself. At the same time there are also a lot more technical particularities involved (subtle differences in terms of distance, timing, angles of attack, and so on) which can make fighting from jodan a very complex affair, especially against a strong and competent opponent. For those (plus a few more, mostly etiquette-related) reasons I usually do not take jodan against senseis that I am not already familiar with.

However, in Noma dojo I didn’t have to worry about this. I had my second match with Tanaka sensei and since we knew each other previously, I took jodan. Apparently others noticed this (which wasn’t hard, as I was the only person that morning who was fighting from jodan), and in every subsequent match, when I started from chudan, a sensei would tell me soon to take jodan against them. At one point when I was fighting some lower ranked member, a sensei in all whites who had been carefully watching us for a while suddenly stepped in, simply waving my opponent away and taking his place mid-fight – the first time I have seen anything like this happen in my kendo career.

It was a very useful practice, and I was given a lot of small tips and good advice. I did in fact get seriously started with fighting from jodan precisely because of my shoulder problem (as I can rely more on my left arm this way, without having to extend the right hand too much), but now I am really getting to like it. And even if I will not make a full switch (which is unlikely), jodan is a great way to learn and practice things that I can incorporate to my chudan kendo.

Today I will be heading on from Tokyo, to another famous (if not very old) dojo that Iwatate sensei keeps in Chiba. Iwatate sensei himself is unfortunately away from Japan, on a kendo trip to Brazil, but tonight Kon sensei should be leading the practice in his stead in Shofukan. I had a chance to practice with Kon sensei (who is very very famous and important here in Japan) a day before we headed to Kitamoto, and based on that experience I have a reason to believe that I am looking forward to another hard keiko.

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Hour by hour, minute by minute we were etching closer to the end of the camp, and then suddenly it was over. We lined up for the last time, there were many speeches and lots of bowing, many thanks and good wishes, and then it was time to pack our equipment and leave the dojo. Despite of having lived for that moment for the last few days, it felt strangely sad.

Today morning at 10am, Tanaka sensei was waiting me outside the Gedatsukai. I bid farewell with all the friends, old and new, loaded my bags to the car and off we went. Tanaka sensei is nanadan (7. dan) and lives halfway between Kitamoto and Tokyo. I will be staying at his place for the next two nights, and he will take me to the legendary Noma dojo tomorrow morning for the asageiko.

When having a dinner tonight, Tanaka sensei asked how many times a day did we practice in Kitamoto. So I told him a bit about Funatsu sensei and our daily routine in general, and then showed him this video of the last minute (out of the total three) of uchikomi and kakarigeiko that one of our Australian guys had with Fukumoto sensei, basically the same routine that I too had gone through a couple of days before:

Tanaka sensei was first sure that he must have misundestood the “three minutes” part. Once we established that I had really meant three minutes, he saw the video once more and then asked his daughter for a translation of a japanese word. “This is CRAZY” pronounced Tanaka sensei very carefully, shaking his gray head. “Even in police don’t people train like that, it is only the tokuren are given three minutes of uchikomi.”

This is of course a relieving thing to hear, as it would seem that the worst must be over by now. I have still got ten days to go, many places to visit and many people to fight – and some of them are certainly going to give me hard time. But then I can think back to Kitamoto and reassure myself that it could be a whole lot worse🙂

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It would seem that I was a bit hasty with my announcement that Kitamoto camp has become all soft and cuddly lately. I have now spoken to several people who have been to Kitamoto earlier (and in different years), and they all have confirmed that if it wasn’t for one thing it would be a pretty normal Kitamoto camp.

This one thing is Funatsu sensei.

Funatsu sensei seems to have made up his mind to do his best to turn this useless bunch of civilians that we are into ninjas within a single week, or apparently have us die trying. We had a small taste of what was to come in the first day, when we did some eight hundred suburi and then lots of kirikaeshi and oikomi across the hall lengthwise. It was hard, but there were pauses to stretch and catch one’s breath a bit – and as we are all at least 3. dan level here, it was nothing that any of us hadn’t been through before.

Yesterday, in the second part of the morning session, Funatsu sensei gave us 800 suburi again, done by sets of hundred each, and again we went through it without too much of a problem. As my shoulder is aching quite a bit, Funatsu sensei had excused me of doing them along, but I have in fact been trying to keep up at the back of the hall, doing it one-handed with my good left arm.

However, at the start of the evening session, when everybody lined up with their men and kote for some more kirikaeshi and oikomi, Funatsu sensei asked with a sly smile “why do you have all those things in front of you? You won’t be needing them.”

This didn’t sound good.

As we took out gear out of the way, Funatsu sensei announced that someone had asked him if we are going to do a thousand suburi some day, and a kind person as he is he could not possibly refuse – and so we were about to do senbon-suburi. Now, senbon-suburi is not simply a thousand suburi, it is thousand hayasuburi that is done in succession, without a single break. Those who have practised kendo will have a very good idea what this means, but for those who have not, here is a video that should give you an idea what exactly is hayasuburi. Going through a thousand of them takes about twenty minutes, by the way.

And so we had two leaders at the front to keep the count and off we went. At around the 500 mark, people started to have cramps. Some of them were taken away from the floor, while others were stretching and trying to get back to it. When we finally counted the last suburi out of the thousand, we were given a hearty applause by senseis who had been cheering us along all the way. Sato sensei then informed us that this was the first time ever that senbon suburi was done in Kitamoto camp, and added that it may in fact become a tradition from now on. So be warned if you consider coming😉.

It was hard, very hard, and I doubt if there were many among us who could have made it through alone. However, it was precisely doing it together that made it possible. A guy from Luxembourg that I know from several years ago came to me later and said that at one point he was about to give up – and then looked over his shoulder and saw me sweating and suffering at the back of the hall, despite of having been given a permission to just sit and watch, and then decided to go on.

This is actually a very good reflection on a broader point that relates well to all the martial arts, and to many different kinds of endurance sports in general, I suppose. I have never ran a marathon myself (and I doubt if I ever will), but I imagine that there must be something similar going on there. When you are completely exchausted, when every cell of your body tells you that there is nothing left, then it is seeing those other people around you in precisely the same state of desperate exhaustion that will keep you going. It is also related to another question that I have had many people ask me over the years – “why do people willingly subject themselves to such pain and suffering that is involved with doing full contact martial arts.” The answer is of course that the pain will fade and go away, but what you gain by having gone through it doesn’t. In the famous words from a Hollywood movie: “Pain is your friend, your ally” – and while we often inflict it to each other when training martial arts, there is a genuine sense of gratitude after the practice is over. You can often see boxers or MMA fighters hugging each other after the fight, and this is not just a token gesture. It is the same reason why in Japanese martial arts people bow to each other before and after a fight or practice. Pain is not simply an unfortunate aspect of doing martial arts, it is an essential ingredient.

Now everyone is in a survival mode here in Kitamoto, counting remaining hours of practice and simply trying to hang on. When in first two nights there was a lot of talking and beer-drinking late into the night, now everybody is trying to squeeze out every minute of sleep from the short pauses after breakfast and lunch. People wake up with heavy groans and limp along the corridors. The huge first aid box in the reception has become very popular. I have been taping several people’s shoulders and Achilles’ tendons myself. The hell that Funatsu sensei has been putting us through has had an interesting side-effect though. It has really welded us all together. People constantly inquire “how’s your leg doing” or “is your shoulder any better” and we all nod to each other with a knowing expression when meeting on stairs. And I am sure that when we meet ten or twenty years from now, we will remember at least the senbon suburi that we endured together.

There is just one more day to go, and I will try to make it through without wrecking my shoulder. However, the shoulder not withstanding I am getting into a pretty good shape here.

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Kafka: The Next Village

My grandfather used to say: “Life is astonishingly short. Now, in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village without being afraid that—apart from accidents—even the time allotted to a normal, happy life is far too short for such a journey.”